LOS
ALTOS HILLS - Former U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston has become an abolitionist.

With the same relentless, disciplined energy that characterized his 40-year
career in Democratic politics, Cranston is leading a global crusade for the
abolition of all nuclear weapons.

Cranston, who retired from the Senate in 1992 after four terms, now devotes
full time to running the Global Security Institute, which he founded to advance
the case for abolition.

Free of the partisan pressures of elective politics, he is able to take a
detached view of the ongoing soap operatics of the presidential vote count in
Florida. "There's never going to be a satisfactory solution from the point
of view of the loser," he said. "The party that loses will be a sore
loser, (and) the winner may have a very tough time leading and getting much
done.''

So, under the political radar for the past eight years and even against the
din in Florida, Cranston, in a rare interview, said that he relished pursuing an
agenda he found truly meaningful.

In a long conversation in the capacious, book-and-memorabilia-lined study at
his Los Altos Hills home, Cranston, 86, acknowledged that consciousness raising
in the United States on the nuclear weapons abolition issue was a formidable
task.

"Concern about nuclear weapons is about No. 18 (in the polls)," he
said. "They just don't think it's a serious problem, and young people don't
have any memory of the Cold War."

In fact, the threat posed by nuclear weapons "is more dangerous now than
it was during the Cold War," because "terrorists and rogue state
leaders are not under the restraints they were then," Cranston said.

Besides, he said, "there has been no significant change in nuclear
policy by the U.S. and Russia since the end of the Cold War. . . . They still
have thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert status that can be fired
in 45 seconds.

"Launch on warning is still followed by both countries, and they follow
the concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD). It boggles the mind, but they
do," he said.

Peace and the establishment of some sort of world authority to deal with
issues that transcend the capability of individual nations have been consistent
themes in Cranston's career.

As a young foreign correspondent, Cranston saw firsthand the rise of Hitler
and Mussolini and warned against the rise of Nazism and Fascism. His 1945 book,
"The Killing of the Peace," examined the Senate decision to keep the
U.S. out of the League of Nations. He wrote it to avert a similar fate for the
United Nations.

The Global Security Institute, headquartered at the Presidio - and at
Cranston's home office - has persuaded more than 100 international civilian
leaders, including 44 past and presidents and prime ministers, to sign on to its
nuclear weapon elimination initiative.

The institute's full-page ad appearing last month in the New York Times,
calling on the American government to "commit itself unequivocally" to
negotiate worldwide reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons, made it clear
that Cranston had attracted a powerful constituency.

Abolishing nuclear weapons "is not some wild idea that a few people
have," Cranston said. "America is committed to abolition under the
nonproliferation treaty . . . signed and ratified when Nixon was
president." The problem is that the treaty has not been adhered to, and
both the United States. and Russia retain some 15,000 nuclear weapons - down
from a maximum of 30,000 - but still an unconscionable number, he said.

Cranston said that the institute's short term goals were "taking the
weapons off hair trigger alert and reducing the arsenals."

Down the road, "there should be a worldwide ban on the production of
fissionable materials that you need to produce a bomb and an inventory that can
be watched every step of the way, to make it hard for rogues and terrorists to
get a bomb," he said. The authority to monitor and enforce such a security
system doesn't exist, but "we have committed ourselves to the goal. It just
hasn't been worked out yet."

In addition to the practical matter of avoiding a deadly calamity, either
accidental or terrorist-caused, there is a moral issue, Cranston said.

"You can't mobilize support just out of fear . . ." he said.
"We are now relying on terror for security, saying if you don't like it, we
will wipe out millions of your people with a nuclear bomb. And that's what
terrorists do."

As a practical matter, "it's difficult to believe that nuclear weapons
can be around forever and never be used. It's up to us to take the lead for
their abolition. We created them. We're the only nation that has used them. We
have more than any other nation, and we're the only real super power now. So we
have to lead the way," he said.

Cranston was born in Palo Alto and reared near his current home. At Stanford
University he ran a 48-second quarter mile and was a member of the mile relay
team, the nation's fastest. He later set world speed records for seniors in the
100-yard dash.

Cranston survived prostate cancer, and he looks every one of his 86 years -
but looks deceive. Although he gave up competitive running a few years ago, he
still lifts weights and retains a trim physique.

It is a fact buried in the tangled modern political history of California
that it was Cranston who virtually reinvented the Democratic Party in 1952 after
the defeat of presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. In a nonstop, no-sleep
campaign, Cranston barnstormed the state to create the California Democratic
Council, a federation of local Democratic Clubs that provided the muscle for the
party's 1958 sweep of statewide offices.

Elected to the Senate in 1968 after two terms as state controller in
Sacramento, Cranston quickly rose to a leadership position and was elected
Democratic whip seven times.

"I don't miss the Senate. I had 24 years there, and that was
great," he said. These days, "I get more done on this issue
(abolishing nuclear weapons) than I could in the Senate because I can
concentrate."

As a senator, Cranston played a leading role in moving the SALT, START and
Panama Canal treaties through the Senate, and he drafted the first bill cutting
off money for the Vietnam War. But he believes that his longest-lasting
achievements were environmental bills. "Redwood National Park, wild rivers,
parks on the sea coast, the Alaska land bill. . . . I'd like to have gotten more
done on the peace front than I did, but I was there mostly during the Cold
War," he said.

Cranston also drafted the Desert Protection Act and managed to push it
through the House, only to see it die in the Senate, because his California
Republican colleagues - Sens. S.I. Hayakawa, Pete Wilson and John Seymour -
insisted on weakening it.

California's Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein "had the good fortune to
have (Sen.) Barbara Boxer with her, and she didn't have to water it down,"
he said. "She will be remembered for the desert bill more than I will, but
I'll be a footnote."

In his last year in the Senate, Cranston became enmeshed in the so-called
Keating Five scandal, in which in he received a reprimand from the Senate Ethics
Committee for overzealous fund-raising. He received $865,000 from financier
Charles Keating for voter registration efforts to help Democrats.
Simultaneously, he lobbied administration banking officials on behalf of
Keating, who later went to jail for securities fraud.

Cranston always maintained that his role was mischaracterized, but he
declined an opportunity to clarify it or criticize his colleagues or the press.
It's water under the bridge, he said.

Cranston is doing a lot of writing these days, but not on his memoirs.
"I don't have time for it," he said.

Instead, he is focusing on an issue that has been an abiding passion, one
that led him as a young man to become president of the United World Federalists:
sovereignty.

"When they created our country, the Founding Fathers said sovereignty
doesn't belong to the nation, it belongs to the individual, and we exercise some
sovereignty in San Francisco, some in Sacramento, some in the nation, but the
one place where you don't have sovereignty - you have chaos - and that is in the
world," he said. Consequently, "some small amount of sovereignty
should be placed in world institutions," he said.

"We already know that in some cases - the Postal Union, the Telegraph
Union, SALT treaty, START treaty, the European Union - but it's not done in the
thoughtful, organized way it must be done," he said. Creating world
institutions to deal with issues too big for nations to handle "isn't
visionary or idealistic, it's practical, the only way we know how to avoid
chaos."

For most of his life as a public man, Cranston carried a quotation from the
Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu in his wallet, until it became too tattered to read.
By then he had memorized it, and it guides his life still, he said.

"A leader is best when people barely know that he exists. . . . Of a
good leader, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will all say 'we did
this ourselves.' "

"I've tried to live this," Cranston said, "but it's hard to do
in elective politics."

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